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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29063373">future conditional</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/elisela/pseuds/elisela'>elisela</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>southpaw [6]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Teen Wolf (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, Angst with a Happy Ending, I swear it really does end happy, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Relationship Issues</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 08:29:19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,614</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29063373</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/elisela/pseuds/elisela</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles knows something is off from the moment he opens the front door. There’s no patter of tiny feet running through the house, rushing from place to place like the most overworked chef in the city, offering a variety of imaginary meals on tiny spoons that are pushed in his face with a demand to taste. He can’t hear Derek either, though there’s music coming from the speakers in the kitchen, and the sound sets Stiles on edge. He knows every song on this playlist and he dreads hearing them, because Derek only listens to Colin Hay when he’s at a low point, and Stiles has been hearing that voice too often lately.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>southpaw [6]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2014576</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>213</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>A Very Sterek Winter 2021</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>future conditional</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For A Very Sterek Winter day 6: body heat. </p><p>Me to The Cursed Five: it ends happy! You know that!<br/>Them: 🔪🔪🔪</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Stiles knows something is off from the moment he opens the front door. There’s no patter of tiny feet running through the house, rushing from place to place like the most overworked chef in the city, offering a variety of imaginary meals on tiny spoons that are pushed in his face with a demand to taste. He can’t hear Derek either, though there’s music coming from the speakers in the kitchen, and the sound sets Stiles on edge. He knows every song on this playlist and he dreads hearing them, because Derek only listens to Colin Hay when he’s at a low point, and Stiles has been hearing that voice too often lately.</p><p>He thinks about turning around—he hadn’t said anything when he pushed the door open and even if Derek heard him, he won’t come looking if Stiles leaves. He’ll go on with his night, taking care of Norah like he usually does, pretend to fall asleep when he puts her down in the evening until Stiles slips into the other side of the bed or does his own pretending that he fell asleep on the couch while he was watching television and completely ignoring that all the problems in his marriage are his own damn fault.</p><p>Derek makes the decision for him, unintentionally, when he appears in the doorway and looks at Stiles, startled, before swiping a lemon off the bar and walking away without a word. Stiles kicks his shoes off, leaves one under the bench in the front hall and one right in the middle, and walks after him. “Hey,” he says, frowning when he doesn’t see Norah in the kitchen, “was it my turn to pick her up?”</p><p>“She’s staying with Cora tonight,” Derek says. His shoulders are bowed as he chops vegetables steadily, the solid thump of the knife seeming to hit harder as he speaks. “They’re doing their ballet thing. I told you about it when Cora got the tickets, and it’s all Norah’s talked about all week.”</p><p>Stiles winces. Norah has talked about it all week, saying that she and Cora were going to see the pretty ballerinas soon, but she also talks about how her birthday is soon and that’s seven months away, so he doesn’t think it’s really fair of Derek. “Oh,” he says, and it sounds pathetic even to his own ears. “Okay, um, do you have plans?”</p><p>The knife clatters onto the cutting board and Derek lets out an exhale that sounds almost pained before he turns around, and Stiles’ chest burns at the look of resignation on his face. Sadness—Stiles can handle that. Sadness has been written into Derek’s face for a good part of the last two years whenever he looks at him. “No,” Derek says quietly, eyes at the ground in front of Stiles’ feet. “I was going to make dinner but—”</p><p>“I already ate,” Stiles lies, trying to offer Derek an out. They don’t need to sit and have an awkward dinner without Norah around as a buffer; Derek can make an excuse and leave to go see Allison, or Erica and Boyd, and Stiles can order in and bury his head a little further in the sand. </p><p>Derek’s body stiffens almost imperceptibly, and he nods. When he looks up at Stiles, there’s a slight flush high on his cheeks, and he looks lost, but determined. “When’d you stop going to therapy?”</p><p>Stiles’ lips part, ready to lie, to deflect and say his therapist was ill and canceled their session, or that he just didn’t feel up to it today. Instead, he says, “two years ago,” and watches as Derek’s expression carefully goes blank. </p><p>He expects—something. Questions, maybe, about why the hell he’s lied for so long and what he does every week when he leaves the house and says he’s going to therapy. Anger, definitely, because Stiles would be fucking pissed if he’d found out Derek had lied to him for two years no matter what it was about, or maybe shock, dismay. Instead, Derek’s gaze goes a little distant as he looks over Stiles’ left shoulder, and all he says is a quiet “okay.”</p><p>“Okay,” Stiles says slowly. There’s a moment then, when Derek’s eyes meet his briefly before he turns around, that Stiles wonders if this is a point of divergence in his life, if in another branch of the universe he takes a deep breath and tells Derek that he’s sorry, that he didn’t feel any differently after a few months of therapy and he’d quit but felt too ashamed to tell him, that he’s just been wandering aimlessly around Brooklyn for two hours every week so he didn’t have to admit he failed at something else. He wonders if that Stiles and Derek make it through; he wonders if he and Derek will, or if this will be the weight that finally breaks them. Through it all, Derek scrapes the half-chopped vegetables into a container and sets them in the fridge, carefully moves the knife and cutting board to the sink, and Stiles is no closer to speaking at all when Derek leaves the room.</p><p>He doesn’t move until he hears the front door open and close again; he switches off the music and the kitchen lights, walking through the dining room and furrowing his brow at the candles on the table. He thinks Derek and Norah must have been playing pretend again; Derek indulges her, of course—Stiles has never met another two and a half year old who is allowed to run her own five star restaurant complete with the good dishes and tapered candlesticks—but then he catches sight of two neatly wrapped gifts in the middle, and his heart plummets.</p><p>His hand shakes as he reaches for them, tracing a finger over the small rows of white hearts on grey backed wrapping paper, and he exhales. He’d known, in the back of his mind, that their anniversary was coming up—just before Christmas, right when the weather was starting to turn too cold—he just hadn’t realized how quickly the month had already passed. And this—this feels too far. He knows Derek, and Derek will forgive him for a number of things that Stiles isn’t sure he’d be so generous about if the situation was flipped. He’d been there through Stiles’ breakdown over being traded, shouldered the burden of raising a child essentially alone while Stiles shut down after Norah was born, and had kept trying to help even as Stiles pretended everything was okay and slowly put more space in between them. </p><p>He’s not sure the forgiveness will be so easily extended to a husband who lies as often as he breathes and forgets their third anniversary. It’s when he’s standing there, phone in one hand but looking at the front door, trying to figure out if he should call Derek or just try to run after him that the glass rattles hard in the windowpanes and the lights flicker rapidly a few times before giving up and leaving him standing, alone, in the dark.</p><p>Tightness sparks in his chest then, sharp and furious, and Stiles clenches his free hand into a fist and swallows down the burst of panic in his throat. He stretches his fingers out and tries to breathe in deeply, but it’s interrupted by the way his lungs feel like they’re straining against his ribs and his heart plays a frantic drumbeat in his chest. He gropes for the dining room chair in the dark and sinks into it, leaning forward and pressing his forehead onto the table. Hands clutching at his own knees, he squeezes his eyes shut and tries to think about something else—<em>anything</em> else—to distract himself, but all he can focus on is the blood rushing in his ears and he can’t stop himself from nearly hyperventilating, breath wheezing out through his raw throat.</p><p>“Hey, hey,” he hears, and his shoulder sag with relief when he recognizes Derek’s voice, hands pushing at him to sit upright in the chair. He leans forward to grab onto him, but Derek keeps him up with one hand on his shoulder, the other on his heart. “It’s just a power outage, it’ll be back on soon. It’ll be fine in a few hours.”</p><p>He shakes his head, letting go of the death grip on his knees to slide a hand up and cover Derek’s, threading their fingers together, still pressed over his heart. The power outage didn’t bother him; they’d had plenty when he lived in Beacon Hills, where the power lines near the Preserve got downed by falling trees at least once a year when the storms would start. He used to make a game of it, spreading blankets over the couch and pretending he was camping as his mom set tealights in old jam jars and let him eat dry cereal by the handful while she read him a book by flashlight. The memory of it floats away, and as he looks into Derek’s eyes he has the sudden, crushing thought that his mom would be so disappointed in him.</p><p>“You,” he gets out, and he can just barely see Derek frown before the phone on the table goes dark, leaving them without even the dim light of the screen. He takes another few breaths, easier now that Derek’s in front of him and he doesn’t have the devastating, sinking feeling that enough was finally enough. </p><p>He lets the feel of Derek’s arm on his chest anchor him, focuses on the steady, light pressure of his hand to calm him heartbeat, and feels jittery when Derek pulls him to standing, like he’s about to shake out of his skin, but removed enough from the panic that he doesn’t collapse. Derek’s hands stay on him as he leads them into the living room and stops by the couch, cupping the back of Stiles’ neck for a moment as he sits down. “You’ll be okay while I go get the lantern?”</p><p>“Norah broke it last week,” he says. His voice sounds weak to his own ears so he clears his throat quietly before he adds, “it took an unfortunate tumble down the stairs as she was mountain climbing.”</p><p>“There goes her allowance,” Derek says, and Stiles recognizes that he’s trying to distract him, but he still reaches up and grabs Derek’s arm when he starts to move away. “Stiles,” Derek says, pulling his arm away but catching his hand at the last moment and squeezing gently. “Let me get some light in here, and then we’ll—talk. Or sit. Whatever you need.”</p><p>He leans back onto the couch when Derek drops his hand and waits, listens as Derek moves around more confidently in the dark than he would ever be able to. It reminds him of bouncing Norah gently as he walked her around in the dark as an infant trying to get her to go to back to sleep in the middle of the night, and how Derek would inevitably come rescue them after the third time Stiles walked into the corner of the coffee table and cursed too loudly. The darkness recedes after the click of a lighter sounds, and the pressure lifts off Stiles’ chest as he watches Derek light the three-wick candles that have been sitting on the built-in shelves ever since Laura moved out. </p><p>Derek’s quiet as moves across the room and sits beside him, and Stiles watches out of the corner of his eye as he carefully leaves space between them, then shifts himself over a little further before he says, “you said it was because of me.” </p><p>The ache in his chest grows; not panic, this time, but the familiar guilt that burrows deeper inside him whenever they interact lately. “Not because of you,” he says, pulling one of the throw pillows onto his lap and picking at the fringe. “I thought—maybe I fucked up so bad this time that you wouldn’t come back.”</p><p>“Of course I’d come back,” Derek says. Stiles avoids looking at him, but he can hear the hurt in his voice. “I promised you—when we got married, I promised you forever. I’m not going to leave because of a few bad months.” Before Stiles can think of something to say, he adds, “I’m sorry for making you think that I would,” and he sounds so sincere that Stiles almost wants to punch him.</p><p>“Oh, and this is how you want to live forever?” he asks; he hates himself for it, for responding to kindness with sarcasm, for not being able to <em>stop</em> pushing Derek away even though he knows that eventually, Derek will rightly decide there’s nothing left to salvage.</p><p>“No,” Derek says, and it sounds too measured, just on the edge of anger. “I’d prefer it if we could have a conversation where you didn’t act like you couldn’t stand to be around me. And I don’t—I’m not the one who’s had one foot out the door for months now, Stiles. I tried to give you time, I figured that—therapy is difficult, I know that, sometimes you have to work through shit and it wrecks you—but you’re not even trying,” he says, and the anger fades into helplessness as his words punch against Stiles’ chest. “I thought maybe you’d stopped going recently, but you said two years and it was clear that you didn’t realize it was our anniversary and it hurt, okay? I didn’t know what to do, but I couldn’t stand there and listen to you lie and make excuses today, so I left.”</p><p>He closes his eyes against the wetness he feels starting to gather in the corners, keeping his jaw clamped shut so he doesn’t say anything else he ends up regretting. They sit in silence and Stiles stares down at his own hands, fingers pulling ragged strings out of the pillow on his lap until he catches movement out of the corner of his eye and looks over to see Derek’s hand resting on the couch between them, palm up.</p><p>Before his anxiety attack, he can’t really remember the last time Derek had reached out for him. He doesn’t remember it being a conscious decision on his part, to pull away physically—he thinks it must have just happened, a symptom of his avoidance of being alone with Derek, or maybe Derek’s own way to guard against what he saw as inevitable. He stares at Derek’s hand for a moment, and remembers the shame that had flooded through him when he thought about what his mom would say to him if she was here.</p><p>“My mom told me the other day that she doesn’t always love my dad,” Derek says quietly. “That sometimes you have to rely on commitment and respect until you fall in love again. So it’s okay if—if you need more time, or if you’re not there yet. Just don’t get so far away that you can’t come back. Please.”</p><p>Stiles takes his hand. </p><p>He watches the flames sway back and forth for several long minutes, barely casting a glow over the room. Without the white noise from the appliances, he can hear the sounds from the street filtering in, the rain starting to tap on the roof and patio, the steady sound of Derek’s breathing. It reminds him of their pre-Norah years, of coming home to find Derek waiting for him, half asleep on the couch with his glasses still on, book open on the floor—it reminds him of when he used to stay up all night to talk to Derek until the sun rose in the off-season, when he’d hurry out of the locker room after a game because he knew what was waiting for him at home. “Do you sometimes look at Norah and wonder how it’s been two and a half years already?”</p><p>If Derek is surprised by the change in topic, he doesn’t show it. “All the time,” he says, squeezing Stiles’ hand. “Whenever she sets a plate in front of me and tells me she made pesto salmon I think about how she screamed and cried for an entire week when we tried to feed her something other than blueberries.”</p><p>“Boobellies,” Stiles corrects automatically, shaking his head, lips curling into half a grin before he glances at Derek and the smile fades. “I don’t feel like it’s been that long,” he says quietly. “I thought it’d be temporary, the way I felt when she was born, but it just kept getting worse. You were right, you know, sometimes I can’t be around you. Not because of you, but because I—I don’t know how to stop pushing you away anymore, and I hated how that made me feel. I hated myself for it and I still couldn’t stop.”</p><p>Derek’s thumb sweeps tentatively over the back of his hand a few times. “But you want to?”</p><p>“Yeah,” he says, tipping his head back against the couch and watching the shadow of the candle flames dance on the ceiling. “I could try therapy again,” he adds, wanting to offer some sort of proof that he’s serious to Derek, although he wouldn’t be surprised if Derek doesn’t believe it. Maybe if he found someone different, this time—maybe he should try Derek’s therapist; it’d felt too weird when he first considered it, but he didn’t like the guy he’d ended up with, and look where that had gotten him. </p><p>“I’ve been trying to let you work things out,” Derek says, “because that works for me. I need to deal with things on my own first. But maybe I should have pushed you to talk more. Maybe that would have helped.”</p><p>“Maybe,” Stiles says. He’d known Derek was giving him space to work things out, but somewhere along the way it felt like it turned into a mutual decision and he wonders what would have happened if Derek had just stopped letting him get away with it. “That’s what Jackson used to do.”</p><p>“I’ll call him for tips,” Derek says, and Stiles looks over at him and smiles at the dry tone he’s gone so long without hearing. “Is that permission?”</p><p>“Permission to bully me granted,” he says, nodding, and narrows his eyes when Derek pulls his hand away and stands up. “I didn’t mean <em>now</em>,” he complains, reaching out his hand for Derek’s. He’s not entirely ready to give up what little comfort sitting side by side had offered. </p><p>“You’re going to go get us more comfortable clothes and grab some games,” Derek says, ignoring him as he walks them into the kitchen and digs a flashlight out from the junk drawer and hands it over, “and I’m going to make dinner—I know you didn’t eat earlier, your stomach has been growling—and then we’re going to meet back in here. Maybe it’s not the anniversary I’d planned, but we could just—we could be together. Like we used to.”</p><p>Like they used to—God, he wants that. Not that he would ever give Norah up, but he would give almost anything to jump back to the day he’d gotten traded and try again, to reach for Derek instead of pulling away, to be able to look at his husband now without being wrapped in guilt so heavy that it chokes him. </p><p>Maybe he just needs to try.</p><p>He goes for the games first—Derek’s fingers trail down his arm as he leaves the room, switching the flashlight on and making his way downstairs, light bouncing off the bright orange wall that Derek had never painted back over. This area hasn’t been used much since Norah was born and, with the exception of the wall, looks almost exactly like it did when Stiles first saw it. He forgets the games for a moment and runs his hand along the bookshelf, pushing at the spines of the books he would read while Derek worked, pausing when he reaches one that’s unfamiliar, spine unbroken, and pulling it out. It’s a book of questions, and he feels his heart beat a little faster when he thinks about just how far Derek was out of his comfort zone when they started dating and how hard he tried to make it work. </p><p>He keeps the book in his hand as he walks away, crossing the room towards Derek’s old bedroom. They’d meant to repurpose it as an office shortly after Laura moved out but only had gotten as far as moving Derek’s desk against a wall. There are algebra tests stacked neatly in the middle now, but Stiles’ eye is caught by the photo book sitting on the edge—his wedding gift to Derek, a bound history of their first few years, conversations he’d spent weeks scrolling through to capture everything important, copies of notes and travel receipts interspersed with pictures of them. He flips it open and reads through their messages—he’d included the first ones he’d sent Derek in Words With Friends, a diatribe about his usage of the word <em>za</em> to get 31 points—Stiles still maintains that slang should not be allowed in a game of Scrabble, even if the app will accept it.</p><p>Pulling open the closet where the games are kept, he clamps the flashlight between his teeth as he digs around, dragging his fingers past everything to yank the Scrabble box out from the bottom, taking the dictionary shoved to the side with him before grabbing a deck of cards and closing the door. </p><p>It doesn’t feel like it takes long to gather everything up, but he must have spent more time looking through their book than he thought, because by the time he has a pile of clothes and blankets in his arms, Derek’s setting down a tray with soup and a stack of grilled cheese on the coffee table. </p><p>“How’d you do that with the power out?” he asks, dropping the bundle on the couch and tossing their clothes to the side. Well—Derek’s clothes. Stiles had changed upstairs, helping himself to both a shirt and hoodie of Derek’s, glad he did when Derek’s gaze lands on the worn, cracked NYU lettering over his chest and his face breaks into a small, pleased smile. </p><p>“You can light a gas stove with a match,” Derek says. “That’s why I didn’t put you in charge of the food. Figured we’d end up with peanut butter on crackers.” His hands go to the waistband of his jeans and Stiles looks away out of habit, smoothing a blanket down over the couch cushions and piling the rest on the edge. The house is well-insulated but he can feel the temperature dropping already without the heat on, and it’s just going to get colder the later it gets. When he looks back over, Derek’s still bare-chested, close enough to touch. </p><p>“Uh,” he says, unable to drag his eyes back up to Derek’s face, busy staring at the hair that stretches across his chest, dipping down to the waist that’s gotten thicker and more muscular over years as he’s trained with Allison, the sweats that sit low on his hips on purpose. He feels a little lightheaded when Derek reaches for him, wrapping his hands around Stiles’ side and pulling him closer. There’s a moment where Stiles hardly breathes, hands still at his sides, until Derek dips his head down into the curve of his neck and Stiles exhales, bringing his hands up to grab onto Derek’s arms. </p><p>Derek’s nose drags up his neck and he shivers, mouth parting at the trail of warm breath before Derek presses a kiss just below his ear and starts to pull away. He tightens his grip and tilts his head, brushing his lips across the scruff of Derek’s beard until he reaches the corner of his mouth and pauses for just a moment, breathing in before he moves his hand to Derek’s cheek and tips his head, pressing their mouths together hesitantly. Derek pulls away first, just far enough that their lips part, and Stiles registers that his hands are shaking against his hips. “Hi,” he whispers, bringing his other hand to Derek’s face and pressing his palms against his cheeks, fingertips moving to stroke into Derek’s hair at his temples. </p><p>“Hey,” Derek whispers back, and Stiles sighs when he leans in and presses another kiss to his lips. “We should eat. It’ll get cold and you’ll complain.”</p><p>“Yeah, okay,” he says, because it’s true, so he follows Derek’s lead and sits down on the floor, forcing himself to keep enough space between them so he doesn’t spend the entire time elbowing Derek as they eat. Derek sets up the Scrabble board when he’s finished, not bothering to tilt the tile racks away from each other before loading them up with letters. “You can go first,” he offers—because Derek is loaded down with vowels and Stiles only has two, but he regrets it as soon as Derek lays down <em>queue</em> and places it so he gets double points on the q. </p><p>“You’re starting to remember why we stopped playing, aren’t you,” Derek teases, and the way he nudges against Stiles’ shoulder is so easily affectionate that Stiles can only half-heartedly glare at him. </p><p>“You’re cheating,” he says, and Derek gives him an unimpressed but undoubtedly fond look. “You can see all my tiles, it’s cheating.”</p><p>“Uh huh,” Derek says. “That must be why you always lost, because I was cheating.”</p><p>“Rude,” he says, and when Derek makes a small sound as he goes to put down letters, he drops them on the table and looks over at him. “Seriously? That’s just mean.”</p><p>“You have another option that would hit the double letter and double word,” Derek says, and Stiles groans. </p><p>“This is just like when we played teams with everyone and you wouldn’t let me put down a single word without a comment and I broke up with you,” he says, grabbing for another sandwich and stuffing it in his mouth. “I see how this ends.”</p><p>“Yeah, you broke up with me for a whole turn until you realized that Jackson and Ethan were winning and I thought your head was going to explode,” Derek says, pushing the tiles that Stiles had dropped onto the board and mixing them around. “And that night ended with you getting drunk and loudly insisting we have sex in Jackson’s bed—”</p><p>“I did <em>not</em>,” he protests through a mouth full of food, and then reconsiders it. “Oh, wait, was that the night we skinny-dipped in the hot tub?”</p><p>“No, that was the night that Lydia invited everyone over to celebrate her not being pregnant and you and Scott got sick after eating your weight in burritos and drinking too many watered-down margaritas,” Derek says, and Stiles laughs. “Or it might have been time—huh. I’m starting to realize that getting drunk and convincing me to skinny dip with you was a fairly regular occurrence.”</p><p>“Can’t blame me,” Stiles says, shrugging. “You know what you look like naked. I can’t be held accountable for trying to make it happen more often.” Derek raises an eyebrow, and Stiles’ mood crashes in an instant. He tosses what’s left of the sandwich on the plate and wipes his hands on his sweats, dragging his palms against the soft material more than necessary just to have something to do. “It’s your turn.”</p><p>He can see Derek watching him for a moment before he lifts himself up to sit on the couch and pats the spot next to him; Stiles joins him, but the second he lowers himself down, Derek shifts to lean against the arm and pulls Stiles into him, in between his wide spread legs, tugging at the hem of his hoodie and easing it over Stiles’ head before tossing it on the table, scattering the letter tiles and pulling Stiles back against his chest.</p><p>“Cheater,” Stiles mumbles, and Derek shakes his head, beard scratching across sensitive skin. “Can’t reach the board from here, how are we supposed to play?”</p><p>“I’m too cold to sit down there.” His lips graze Stiles’ skin as he talks and Stiles shivers, twisting his hands in the front of his shirt until Derek’s arms wrap around his waist and he presses their hands together. “Needed some body heat. This okay?”</p><p>He slides his hands out from under Derek’s and lifts the bottom of his shirt, waiting until Derek moves and he can yank it over his head. “Body heat is more sufficiently shared when it’s skin to skin,” he says, and settles back against him. He tugs the blanket up further—Derek’s warm against his back, but the air surrounding them isn’t—and feels himself being manhandled, sliding awkwardly down until he’s laying on his side in front of Derek, blankets being tugged over them. “Better,” he says, after Derek slides an arm underneath his neck and loops his other around Stiles’ waist. “Nap?”</p><p>“Pretty sure it’s just called going to sleep after you’ve eaten dinner,” Derek says, sounding amused. “You can sleep if you want.”</p><p>He hums. “Nah, not if you’re not,” he says. He wonders if Derek’s worried, if he’s nervous that they’ll go to sleep and Stiles will pull away again in the morning; he’s still not completely relaxed, just on the edge of discomfort, so he finds the hand Derek has pressed against his stomach and links their fingers together. Touching Derek—that, at least, was always something he was good at. It was just talking about anything that mattered that got too difficult for him, which led to the avoidance. “Ask me something,” he says when the silence stretches on too long. “Talk to me.”</p><p>Derek mumbles something inaudible in his ear and sighs. “What’s your favorite Star Wars movie?”</p><p>He can’t help but laugh. “C’mon, Derek, you already know that one.”</p><p>“I’m not good at this,” Derek protests, squeezing his hand. “It’s why I got that book you brought up. You were always the one with a hundred weird questions on the tip of your tongue and I never knew what to say. Fine. Uh, would you rather let Norah get a snake or a spider for a pet?”</p><p>“Norah can have whatever pet she wants when she has her own place but neither of those are ever living under our roof,” he says, giving an exaggerated shudder. “Jesus, way to freak a guy out. You don’t think she will, will she? Has she said something? Oh my God, I <em>knew</em> she was too interested in the bugs at the park. Derek. We have to present a united front on this, babe, I can’t live in this house if it has creepy crawlies.” He stops, tilting his head to try to look at Derek when he tightens the arm he has around Stiles’ waist. “What’s wrong? You don’t want one, do you?”</p><p>“No,” Derek says, and his lips drag across Stiles’ cheek a moment later before he kisses him. “No, I don’t. Didn’t realize you were so against it, though. Your turn.”</p><p>He sinks back down and pushes back against Derek’s embrace, tugging his hand up until it’s resting over his heart. “Do you agree with the many-worlds theory? You know, all possibilities are realized in different branches of the world?”</p><p>“I’m not sure,” Derek says; Stiles can feel his brow furrow from where his face is pressed into Stiles’ shoulder. “Maybe? I wouldn’t discount it, I guess, but it’s not something I think about very often. Why?”</p><p>“I was thinking about it earlier,” he says, and hurries on so he doesn’t have to get into <em>why</em>. “Maybe somewhere else you were the baseball player and I was the one kicking your ass at Words With Friends.”</p><p>“Pretty sure me being smarter than you is a constant,” Derek says, and laughs when Stiles elbows him. “Sorry, sorry—you know that’s not true. You technically have more degrees than I do now, anyway. I would have told you, though. If I had been in the majors. I wouldn’t have been able to resist trying to impress you.”</p><p>“Eh, you’re decent, but you never made it out of the minors,” Stiles says, and wiggles around to face Derek. “Maybe there’s one where your family moved to Beacon Hills and we were friends in high school.”</p><p>“Yeah? You would have taken poor nerdy me under your wing?” Derek teases, and Stiles leans in to kiss him softly. “I was a dork in high school. You would have never talked to me.”</p><p>“Untrue, I would have dragged you under the bleachers for so many make-out sessions. And I don’t know why you’re using past tense, you’re a dork now,” Stiles says, kissing him again before he reaches up and pulls Derek’s glasses off his face gently. “You know you’re not supposed to wear these laying down, it’s how you broke the last pair.”</p><p>“I wouldn’t have wanted you to talk to me in high school anyway, I’ve heard stories about you and Jackson. My mom would have killed me if I’d gotten mixed in with the bad crowd,” Derek says, and he smiles when Stiles laughs. “Maybe another you played for the Yankees and I didn’t have to spend three years selling my soul to cheer for you.”</p><p>“In your dreams,” he says, poking Derek’s shoulder, and then he stops. “Actually—” he breaks off and leans in, resting his forehead against Derek’s. “Uh, maybe there’s another me—”</p><p>“Actually what,” Derek says, pulling his head away and frowning.</p><p>“It’s nothing,” Stiles insists. He shouldn’t have said anything; he’d made his decision already, there’s no need to tell Derek anything. “I promise.”</p><p>“Come on,” Derek says softly. “We’re—this is good, isn’t it? We’re doing okay? Tell me.” One of his hands comes up and rests against Stiles’ cheek, thumb rubbing across his cheekbones.</p><p>He closes his eyes and lets out a breath. “Davidson—he’s a scout for the Yankees—he’s been at the gym the last few weeks. I didn’t invite him or anything, he’s been taking a look at some of the kids that Chris is working with and I was throwing with them, trying to breakdown a screwball for one of them—anyway, you know the Yankees are losing two of their starters this offseason and they’ve got a pretty good depth chart but they’re all young, like really young—” he walks his fingers up Derek’s arm and grips around his bicep. “I said no, Derek, but Davidson wanted me to come down to spring training. They offered me a minor league contract.”</p><p>Derek looks like he’s hardly breathing. “You said <em>no</em>?”</p><p>He raises an eyebrow. “You sound disappointed, which, uh—I thought there’d be some anger, maybe some passive aggressive telling me that I should given how I’ve been treating you lately, but this is a bit of a surprise. Yeah, I said no. It’d probably be a season down in fucking Wilkes-Barre and maybe if someone got hurt I’d get a call-up before the roster expanded but—” he shrugs one shoulder and drags his palm down Derek’s arm before wrapping it around his wrist. “If you think—maybe if you need the space, I could—”</p><p>“No,” Derek says, “no, I wasn’t thinking that, I just got a little stuck on the idea of you as a Yankee, that’s all. I didn’t mean I wanted you to leave. Norah and I aren’t moving to Wilkes-Barre, neither are you.”</p><p>Stiles tilts his head in and rubs their noses together for a moment, relieved. “Hey, Derek.”</p><p>“Hey, Stiles.”</p><p>He waits until Derek pulls away and raises an eyebrow at him. “Can you reach another blanket? I’m still cold.” Derek gives him an odd look—it’s definitely easier for Stiles to reach one—but slides part of his arm out from under Stiles, propping himself up as he moves to grab one from the end of the couch. “Great, now that you’re up, can you get us ice cream?” Stiles asks, biting the inside of his lip at Derek’s flat, unimpressed look. “Please?” He only has a second to bat his eyelashes obnoxiously—if he’s going to push himself to try to act normal, he’s really not going to hold back—before he feels himself falling backwards off the couch, feet tangling up in the blanket and leaving him flat on his back on the floor with his legs still in the air.</p><p>“Oops,” Derek says, but he helps Stiles back up when he gets off the couch, pulling a shirt on as he walks away. </p><p>Stiles snatches his shirt and hoodie off the ground and tugs them on before he sits back down, spreading the blanket over his lap and making grabby hands when Derek comes back holding two pints of ice cream. Derek sits down close to him and Stiles scoots in further, switches his spoon to his left hand so he can slouch down and fit himself under Derek’s arm. “I’m gonna take you on a date tomorrow,” he says, glancing over. “I have a gift for you, you know, for our anniversary—I forgot that today was today but I didn’t just forget about it. So—we can open them in the morning, and I’ll take you to breakfast, and then we can walk across the bridge and pick up Nono. If that’s okay.”</p><p>Derek pauses with his spoon halfway to his mouth, the corner of his mouth lifting when Stiles leans in and steals the bite of ice cream. “That sounds perfect,” he says, grabbing onto Stiles’ wrist and yanking his spoon away before licking it. “Quit stealing.”</p><p>Stiles tips his head onto Derek’s shoulder, twisting to press a cold, slightly sticky kiss onto his neck. “I love you, you know,” he says. “I’ll try, Derek, I swear. If there’s anything I can do—I’ll find another therapist, or I’ll tell Jackson everything and he’ll take it upon himself to force me to talk, if you need anything—”</p><p>“Come to therapy with me tomorrow night,” Derek interrupts. “Not—not for you, you don’t have to talk, but it would help me. We could leave Norah with Cora and Isaac for another night, and you could come with and just—listen. I just want you to listen.”</p><p>He has a feeling that whatever he’s going to hear is going to hurt, but he nods and takes the spoon back, digging it into the ice cream and offering the bite to Derek before popping it in his own mouth. “I can do that,” he says. “We might need to bring duct tape though, now that I’m talking again, I might never stop.”</p><p>“Oh, someone has jokes,” Derek says, and taps his cold spoon against Stiles’ nose. “I wonder if the other yous think they’re just as funny.”</p><p>“Funnier than you,” he shoots back, elbowing Derek gently. “A universal constant.”</p><p>Derek elbows him back and takes the ice cream from his hand, switching their cartons. “I love you, too,” he says, all the teasing gone from his tone. “There’s another constant for you.”</p><p>He drops his spoon on the blanket and moves, lifting himself up to straddle Derek’s lap, knees on either side of his thighs and leaning his head into the curve of his neck. He waits until Derek takes the ice cream from him again, feels him stretch to put them on the side table, and wraps his arms around Derek’s neck. “Yeah,” he says, sliding his fingers into the hair at the back of Derek’s neck, “I know.” </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>
  <a href="https://elisela.tumblr.com/post/641658822324338688/future-conditional-elisela-teen-wolf-tv">rebloggable tumblr link</a>
</p><p>if it helps, i have another southpaw fic for tomorrow that's set in the future and is all happiness!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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